Cleaning Up?

Unlikely Attractions

In works from digital dérives to a floating opera, artists bring new perspectives to New York City's most damaged environments.

Support New City Critics!

Announcing the launch of a campaign to create a new fellowship program empowering fearless and diverse voices to challenge the ways we design, plan, and develop our cities.

Burial Rights

Organizers in Flatbush are fighting for the preservation of an African burial ground — to honor the dead, and protect a living community's future.

Cleaning Up?

Learning Environment

With origins in a massive underground oil spill, the new Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center is seeding future generations of neighborhood activists.

Memory Loss

Roots of Memory

Less conspicuous and permanent than statues or sculptures, New York City’s memorial trees register histories that are personal, passed over, or in progress, from intimate loss to climate catastrophe.

Cleaning Up?

Bless This Mess

The urban landscape is formed by uneven practices of denial and redemption, while stuff stays with us. What are we doing when we are cleaning up?

Memory Loss

Mourn and Organize

For all death’s new omnipresence, the scale of our losses has been hard to locate in the daily fabric of urban life. Where does the city put its grief and voice its outrage?

Gimme Shelter

Photographs of Prospect Park’s unsanctioned constructions simultaneously suggest traces of past settlement and the start of a new civilization. Behind the scenes is a struggle for ecological succession among salamanders, kindergartners, and park management.